First, the tips:

1. If you’re doing anything with beans, get dried beans. Put them and a lot of water in the crock pot overnight–turned off. This will soften the beans and they’ll cook beautifully while you’re at work.

2. Instead of using a blender at the end of recipes that call for them, invest in an immersion blender. You will become evangelical about it.

3. If your soup or stew calls for rice, and you want it to come out great, buy minute rice. Put it in your crock pot stew 10-15 minutes before you want to serve.

Okay–on to the recipes! (I’m sorry, by the way, about the way most of the recipe sites I’m linking to are organized. You have to scroll a LONG way down to the actual recipe, and pop ads get in the way, but I don’t want to steal people’s recipes, either.)

Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan Soup. This is a favorite of my son.

Black Bean Soup. Book group and campus people love this one. It’s vegan, but you can have toppings: cheese, ham/bacon, sour cream, etc. I recommend green onions on top in any case. With this and other bean recipes, have some wine vinegar on the table–just a sprinkle refreshes the flavors.

Curried Lentils with Chicken and Potatoes (from Melissa Bender). So good, and warming in cold weather.

Jambalaya. I do this in the crock pot, though the recipe is for the stove top. See the rice hint above. I also add okra, cause it’s friggin’ jambalaya. If you use shrimp, add them relatively late. The trick to Jambalaya, though, is to do it the old-fashioned way–throw in whatever meat you have. I always use ham and sausage, and I usually throw in a frozen or fresh chicken breast and a frozen fillet of white fish if I have one lying around the freezer.

Red Beans and Rice. Make the rice on the stove or in the rice cooker. Soak the beans first, as described above, and sprinkle with wine vinegar at the end.

Basically, I do almost all the soups/stews I could do on the stove in the crock pot: chili, split-pea soup, white bean soup, chicken soup, vegetable soup, daal, pork tomatillo soup, potato soup, broccoli soup, etc. If you’re doing a pot luck, you can make the soup on the stove, but then take it to the party, or, in my case, the all day grading session, and leave perfection on low.

In addition to the recipes listed above, here are more favorites that book groups and colleagues alike have wanted the recipes for:

Creamy Tomato Soup. You know, the kind kids like. I add basil.

Spiced Carrot Soup with Lime. The boy and I decided this needed a little bit of rice and some coconut milk. We serve it with naan.

Indian Spiced Corn Soup. This is now my favorite corn soup.

Chickpea Vegetable Stew. This can be made vegetarian, or, if you’re making it for my son, you can make it more kid friendly by leaving out the chickpeas.

Yes, I know my son is no longer a kid. And he’s not picky in all the traditional kid ways. He doesn’t like beans, but love broccoli. He eats Japanese, Thai, and Indian all the time, but won’t eat some of the more traditional “American things.”

Just the other day, he had falafel for dinner with his friends. Since he’d been SO picky as a child, he asked if I was surprised.

“No. I know it would take something really exotic like an omelette or an apple pie to throw you now.”

In the summer of 2015, Melissa and I got into Iceland in the morning one day. We stocked up on duty free alcohol at the airport (as the guidebook suggested) and tried to stay up to reset our clocks. We breakfasted, saw the Opera House, the famous ship sculpture (The Sun Voyager), walked down the shopping road (which, in one place, had a bunch of lost gloves all huddled together on fencing), hit a hot spring pool, where we learned about a magic swimsuit spinner/dryer, checked into our air b&b (we were expecting a room in a two-bedroom apartment, but we had a whole two-bedroom apartment, centrally located), went out to dinner at a mediterranean place (with the best baba ganoush I’d ever had), and then finally collapsed.

The Opera House from the outside

Opera House from the inside

The Sun Voyager

Monkey in the living room

Thirteen hours later, we woke up and went to the world famous penis museum. I have to say, most penises are gross, especially when in jars. I have now seen many whale penises and many mouse ones. There was only one human one, of a self-proclaimed lothario. A virgin has promised his, so we can see the contrast. And the man with the world’s biggest has promised his as well–they had a picture. It was frightening. One of my favorite things was a jar holding an elf penis (the jar looked empty; Icelandic elves are invisible unless they choose to let you see them (there are several myths about this, including one in which Eve accidentally curses some of her children into invisibility when they are dirty and she doesn’t want God to think her a slovenly mother)). And I learned things, too. For example, I had no idea that almost every other species not only has a dick bone–but a clit bone, too!!!

art at Gló

After having our fill of penises, we found our favorite lunch place: Gló. Highly recommended. Mostly vegetarian. Very fresh. Enormous servings.

longhouse

Then we ventured to the remains of a viking settlement, where we saw the excavation of a longhouse that would have held a family and 10+ animals.

And it just went on like that–beautifully, amazingly.

The highlights:

• Convincing Melissa to do a beer tasting flight before dinner, not knowing their idea of that was five full beers. Each.
  

  4 of the 5 beers

• Meeting Beth and Charlene, two of my friends from middle/high school, for a breakfast, since they just happened to be there, too.
• Visiting the museum, with the Thor idol and the viking graves.
• Seeing Hallgrímskirkja, the famous church.
  

  This was on the wall in the hotel across from the church–The Simpsons is everywhere!

  

  Hallgrímskirkja

  

  The back of the Leifur Eiríksson statue, which is in front of the church.

  

• Eating really good food, the whole time. A favorite was a blueberry-marinated thinly sliced lamb at Laejarbrekka.
• NOT eating “traditional” Icelandic food that ONLY tourists in Iceland eat now (including rotten shark, puffin, and whale). The puffins are endangered, and since we took a boat out to see them, we couldn’t eat one. They are fucking adorable. And they shouldn’t be able to fly–as evidenced by the ridiculous work they are obviously putting into it. They are always on/in/above the water, except when laying eggs. Rubbing their bills together is part of the mating process, and they generally mate for life. I have a note in my diary that says they’re like Cary Grant in My Favorite Wife, which I will assume was a code for: will mate with someone else one year when they can’t find their spouse, but will totally go to back to the spouse if s/he shows up.
  

  faux puffin

  

• Staying up too late. The sun never really went down at all, so it was very hard to tell our bodies to go to bed.
• Seeing four kids with their bikes and their packed snacks in the sculpture garden–obviously being all free-range and happy like we used to be.
• Walking through the teddy bear room in the Museum of Modern Art–yes, they’re slightly melted. 
  

  the teddy bear room

• Worrying about the UTI I had for most of the trip.
• Wading into the Blue Lagoon, were Melissa had wanted to go for years and years (it was even worth missing the penultimate bus and having to wait in the cold an hour and a half for the last one). 
• Attending a great conference and doing well there.
• Meeting one of our writing assignments collection authors, who also presented at the conference (and who was also in Sweden with us this last summer).
• Taking a tour of the countryside, where we saw a glacier (that, yes, has been steadily receding over the last couple of decades), and where we saw Kitla, which will likely be the next volcano to blow (every Icelander is signed up to get a mobile alert to evacuate–she’s bigger than the last one and is named after a female criminal who worked for monks with magic pants), and the hell volcano, believed to be the entrance to the underworld, and basalt columns on a black beach, and two waterfalls, and the folk museum (where we learned a lot about Icelandic history–it was settled in an unusually warm period; people ate lamb, lamb, more lamb, and lamb yogurt for variety; you might think they ate fish, but fishing was pretty dangerous, and the fish that were caught were dried and used to barter for all the things they needed to survive; once the first settlers cut down the trees, none grew back, so they didn’t have wood for fires or ships–basically everything had to be bartered for). We greatly enjoyed our guide, who told us legends and let us listen to Icelandic folk music. My boot broke on the black beach, so I hobbled for the second half of the day. All that we left in our Iceland apartment was my pair of broken black boots and a full bottle of alcohol that we didn’t get to.
  

  basalt columns

  
  

  melting glacier: see the drips?

• Getting a surprise special reading at the conference closing dinner by the award-winning Icelandic author, Einar Már Guðmundsson. (Iceland is home to many authors and many bands. They value art and those who make it.)
• Learning about the Icelandic language. English is widely and well spoken in Iceland, but Icelandic is valued and protected. They have a language council and a names council (Icelandic children must be given Icelandic names), although sometimes the language council words come too little too late, especially for technological terms–the kids just keep using the English word for dongle instead of whatever the council comes up with. In terms of those of us who might learn Icelandic, Icelanders are not super concerned about our accents or grammar, but the theory I heard for this is that it’s because we would be seen as forever foreigners. If I wanted to be an Icelandic citizen, I would have to change my name. Since I’m a woman, I would have to have “James’s daughter” as my surname, although he didn’t raise me and I didn’t even have his last name after I was four or five. So that’s a weird thought. Icelandic women are proud feminists and point to keeping their own name throughout their lives as evidence, but it’s strange to me to be defined solely by a blood father my whole life. I would ask to be my grandfather’s daughter, legally, if I had to change my name that way. I also learned that mothers of bastards aren’t allowed to give their children a man’s name unless the man consents. (I’m looking at you, John Snow.)
  

  Karma Walliessdóttir

• Sensing that there are no cops in Iceland–we didn’t see any. My theory is that the country is run and protected by docents.
• Missing the conference organized golden circle tour. The bus left at 9 from the conference hotel. Melissa and my b&b was about a 20 minute walk. Melissa’s alarm didn’t go off. I woke up at about 8:55 and ran to Melissa’s door in a panic.

Then she got to panic while I woke up enough to realize that it didn’t matter how fast we got dressed–we were missing it.

We decided to do our own tour–the circle is merely a route to see the natural wonders. We rented a car, and I navigated. The very first parliament in the world was out in the open, in Iceland, and we got to see where it happened. (Do not go to the visitor center–it’s up a steep hill with nothing but pay toilets. The cool part, the waterfall, is at the parliament site.)

One lingering question from the markers around the site: “The worst forms of incest” got the worst punishments. What are the worst forms? (If you were a woman being put to death for whatever reason you got to be executed, they drowned you.)

The golden circle road is beautiful, with goats and rams and cows and horses and purple lupins. 

Since we weren’t with the tour, we could follow the my pocket guide book’s recommendation for lunch: Efstidalur II–a working dairy farm. I had beef from their cows, trout from their river, ice cream from their dairy (a wall was glass against the barn, so we could watch cows sleep and hang out while eating their milk product).

The other sites along the way are The Gullfuss (golden) Waterfall (rumored to have gold coins lost somewhere) and the geysir area. Geysers are named after a particular one–Geysir, which isn’t currently active. But there are lots, including mini geysir and Srokkur (the churner). 

We also learned about Sigiour Tomasdottir, an early environmentalist and activist.

I would like to say that we learned the answer to this riddle: how many PhDs does it take to get the shower to work in our apartment? All we know is that the answer was more than two.

All in all, Iceland was wonderful. We’ll always miss it and long to return.

This wheelchair was meant for me, but I didn’t use it.

Monkey making friends

Pasta in a crock pot? Really?

Yes. Oh, yes.

Of course, you already know that you can make a good marinara/spaghetti sauce in the crock pot, leaving it to simmer all day, putting it atop stove-top made pasta when you get home. But pasta can go into the crock pot, too.

How about enough ravioli casserole for a crowd?

What about some mac and cheese (with or without bacon) waiting for you on a rainy day? This one is by Trisha Yearwood. (You can’t leave these dishes on all day, but still.)

I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet I could make this sausage and tortellini soup in the crock pot if I use frozen tortellini . . . or, I could throw the pasta in at the end if it’s fresh (more soups in a blog to come). 

A simple chicken with noodles? 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (can use frozen); 2 cans cream of chicken soup; 1 stick of butter; 2 15 oz cans chicken broth; 24 oz. frozen egg noodles. Directions: Cook chicken, soup, butter, and broth in crock–pot on low for 6-7 hours. Take chicken out and shred. Put chicken back in; add noodles and cook on low for 2 hours. Stir a few times while cooking.

You could do these chicken riggies the same way, instead of cooking the noodles separately.

But what everyone asks for, again and again, is crock pot lasagna: Spray the crock pot with pam. Layer marinara sauce, no boil noodles (yes, you’ll have to break them, and the layering will be uneven), alfredo sauce, no boil noodles. Repeat until 2/3^rds full. Top with mozzarella and cook on low 4-6 hours. Any cheap alfredo sauce will do. When I’m not making my own marinara, I prefer to use this one: Enjoy!!!

We all know the ways in which 2016 has sucked.

I’ve cried a lot more this year, over the deaths of heroes, over the death of reasonable elections, over the fear of how much worse it might get.

But there were good things in 2016.

Melissa Bender and I had a book come out.

I spoke at conferences in Spain, Sweden, London, San Diego, Portland, and Chicago (twice).

I saw Love and Information, The Deep Blue Sea, The Suicide, Aubergine, Keith Lowell Jensen, Emo Philips, Blackberry Winter, Macbeth, Igudesman & Joo, Mr. Burns, Women of Will, the Cashore Marionettes, Disgraced, To Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, Frankenstein, Latin History for Morons with John Leguizamo, The Totalitarians, the opening of the Shrem Museum, and The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips.

I did guest lectures and interviews and stage talk backs. I taught courses that I love, films that I love, plays that I love, creative nonfiction that I love.

I taught 15 courses, got my first grad student through her PhD, mentored and performed with my stand-up students, got another Atwood journal out, started prepping for next year’s Oxford course, ran a program, and got chosen to run another.

I made old family favorites and tried new recipes, including my first shepherd’s pie, my first souffle, and my first carnitas. I made tons of soups and stews and proved the worth of my crock pot time and again.

When I heard that Carrie Fisher had a heart attack on a flight, I thought, “Oh, no–not her, too. Please, no.”

I felt really hopeless about it, though. Of course 2017 would take her away from us.

Now, a few days later, I remind myself that she’ll never be really gone–never be forgotten.

Like every geeky girl, I desperately wanted to be Princess Leia. I had Star Wars memorized. My favorite shirt was an iron-on with the Princess.

Once, I was wearing it when I was sick.

I threw up and then sobbed so uncontrollably that my mother thought I must have cracked a rib. Eventually, I was able to settle down enough to tell her that the crying was because my Princess Leia shirt was ruined. My mother was able to reassure me that the vomit would wash out.

When I outgrew the shirt, I didn’t want to let it go. One day, I decided to turn it into a pillow. Now, I don’t really know how to sew, but I knew I could stumble my way through sewing up the ends. I didn’t know what went into pillows, so I filled it with cotton balls.

As soon as I did so, I realized that must not be what’s in pillows, but the project was almost done!

That pillow has survived a lot of trauma and a lot of moves, including one across the country. It currently lives with the R2D2 in my room.

As I grew up, I began to see Carrie Fisher in new ways–as a writer, a powerful actress, a survivor, and an advocate for mental health.

(Those of us who’d read so much about her relationship with her mother were less surprised by her mother following her into death–it was completely in character.)

I think the most powerful way in which I connected with Fisher, though, was in the use of comedy as a coping mechanism. I’ve often joked that my family crest should have a Byron quote: And if I laugh at any mortal thing, tis that I may not weep.

But I could just as easily use my favorite thing she ever said: If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true.

Fill it up. Plug it in. Go to work. Come home to dinner.

We all need to use our crock pots more, and I’m saying that as someone who uses hers all the time.

Most people know about chili in the crock pot, so I’m not going to give you a chili recipe. I’m just going to give you all the other ones my household loves. We’re covering the non-soup/stew recipes and non-pasta recipes here.

Waltonen Family Meatballs: Buy a package of frozen meatballs, your favorite bbq sauce, and a jar of grape jelly. Mix equal parts jelly and bbq sauce in the crock pot–enough to cover the meatballs. You can either put the frozen meatballs in and let them warm up in the crock pot during the day, or if you’re in a hurry, put them in pre-thawed. In my family, we have these plugged in all day on major holidays to snack on.

A whole damn chicken or turkey breast: That’s right. Use whatever kind of rub you like. I alternate between a savory mix of garlic, thyme, rosemary, s&p, and sage; lemon slices, s&p, rosemary; and peri-peri spices. Leave it in there all day. When you’re ready, the bird will be resting in its own juices. Serve it whole or shred it. I tend to get quite a few meals out of this: the first dinner, a soup, and tacos or enchilada meat. The one drawback: the meat is so tender that you will have a problem keeping it all together if you want to platter it. You’ll also have tons of chicken broth, useful for soups. If you slow cook root vegetables too (in the same pot), you can easily make a stew or chicken pot pie with the leftovers.

You can do any kind of meat you would normally bake in the crock pot. I do all my pot roasts this way.

Beef roast: coat lightly in s&p, flour, garlic, and a touch of ginger. You can cook the root vegetables in there at the same time. Leftovers easily become beef stew.

Pork tenderloin: Mix peach preserves, a bit of mustard, a pinch of crushed red pepper, s&p, and brandy (optional). Pour over the tenderloin.

Kalua pork: You can make a perfect Hawaiian delicacy with three ingredients. Coat a giant pork roast in liquid smoke and sea salt. Cook it all day. Shred. Serve over rice. (Save the broth. You can use the leftovers for pork tacos, enchiladas, or pork stew. This flavor works particularly well with a tomatillo pork stew, which you can also make in the crock pot.)

Caribbean Pork. Mix 4 tsp nutmeg, 4 tsp cumin, 4 tsp salt, 3 tsp cinnamon, and 1/4tsp ground red pepper. Coat a tenderloin or roast in it. Cook it all day. Serve with mixed fruit (mango, pineapple, etc.) mixed with 1 T chopped cilantro, 1-2 tsp lime juice, and cumin.

Speaking of pork, you can make carnitas and carnitas soup with the leftovers. Or try Vaguely Vietnamese Pork Tacos.

Then, try:

Garlic Pesto Chicken in a Creamy Tomato Sauce

Balsamic Glazed Chicken Legs (for these and the garlic pesto chicken, I always put another servings worth of chicken and the marinade in the freezer for a quick meal a few weeks later)

Red Beans and Rice (this recipe isn’t for the crock pot, but it works well there. For perfect beans, start by covering the beans in a lot of water. Leave them in the crock pot overnight–unplugged and off. This will soften the beans so they are perfect after you add the other ingredients, set it to low, and head to work)

Chicken Shawarma (I add oregano and a bit of curry powder to this recipe; I cook on low all day, not using as much water as the original does. I also make Shawarma Rice. I serve them with sliced cucumber & safeway tzatziki cucumber dressing on pita.

It’s Christmas time, so I’m getting ready to make lamb. Usually, I just coat it in a mix of garlic, mustard, and balsamic vinegar, but this year we’re trying this recipe for Persian-Spiced Lamb. I’m altering it just a bit–we’re doing a leg and doing it in the crock pot!

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As some of you know, in the summer, I was in Spain at a narrative health conference. The talks are all addressed to professionals–doctors and teachers talking to doctors and teachers. I participated as a teacher, but listened as a chronic pain patient.

The conference was really interesting, but I kept finding myself frustrated. There were all of these techniques–aimed at letting the patient tell his/her story to the doctor. In other words, instead of just having a doctor actually listen (and take the time to, which is sometimes the hard part), there were “activities” to force it.

And then someone in the audience would ask how they could streamline the activity–you know, to save all that time of listening.

There was also a lot of emphasis on art therapy, which I am behind to an extent, but the idealism at the conference annoyed me sometimes.

One of the organizers asked, “wouldn’t it be great if your doctor put away his diagnostic tool and got out a guitar?”

I leaned over to Melissa and said, “I would punch my doctor if he did that.”

I believe in holistic care, and I mix Western and Eastern techniques in my fight to feel better.

But hey, there’s literally bile in my stomach. And my discs are “desiccated.” And so on. Laughing makes me feel better, but it won’t fix my stomach lining or discs.

That said, stories are immensely important.

After watching me give a couple of presentations in the last few years, a woman suggested I do one woman shows.

“Well, I sort of do–just in shorter form with stand-up comedy.”

(This woman also seemed relieved when she learned I’m originally from the South: “Oh, that makes sense. I was trying to figure you out. I’m normally suspicious of charismatic people, but you always seemed so nice. You’re just Southern.)

This woman is right. I am nice. I am charismatic. I should do a one woman show.

And so that was on my mind when I saw the call for The Storytelling in Health conference this summer in Wales.

I sent them an exploratory email: hey, I could do a regular panel on this, or I could come in as a chronic pain patient and give my narrative–in stand-up form.

And so that’s what we’re going to do.

I’ll have 45 minutes, including a Q&A.

Thrilled. Terrified.

Wondering if a bunch of medical professionals will know they’re supposed to say, “break a leg.”

I can’t get over why reporters can’t get over voter hypocrisy.

There have been several moves Trump has made that could already be called executive over-reach or “pay to play.” Reporters interview voters/supporters and say, “But didn’t you say this was wrong? Why is it okay when Trump does it?”

The answer: “Well, what he’s doing is going to fix all these things.”

There is no admission of what the truth is: it’s okay when Trump does it. It’s not okay when Obama/Hillary does it.

That’s all.

We’ve all seen the videos of voters being read Hitler’s quotes and being told Trump said them. They love the ideas!

We’ve all seen the videos of voters being read Obama’s policies and being told they’re Trump’s. They love the ideas!

We are all guilty of this, to some degree.

For example, Republicans say they believe in small government decisions, favoring the state over the country, the city over the state, except of course when the small government passes pro-marijuana, anti-discrimination, or gun control legislation.

Generally, I’m a federalist, rather than a states’ rights person. I don’t think my rights should be different in different states or that I shouldn’t be able to ship wine to myself from one American place to another or that a lawsuit against someone basically falls away if they move across a state line.

But I love it when California tells the rest of you to go f yourselves sometimes (although of course I want the whole country to get more progressive, so we don’t have to be different) and, during difficult Presidencies, I tell foreigners that I’m from California when they ask. It automatically makes them like me more.

My hypocrisy is absolutely glaring in another way right now.

I believe in empathy, in Rogerian arguments, etc. And yet I cannot yet empathize with Trump voters. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do so with those who are attacking people, who are threatening the Islamic center in my town, who are making me and my friends and my students angry and afraid.

Americans (and humans) have problems upholding their principles; no wonder we elect people without any.

Today I came home from lunch with Melissa to find a few copies of our book at my doorstep.

We’re proud of this–twenty great assignments, with rationales and tips for integrating them into your classroom.

Melissa and I also both wrote a chapter.

Buy yours here or here.